1. science
2. social science
3. pedagogy

VNU Journal of Science, Foreign Languages 25 (2009) 97-106
Why is action research suitable for education?
Tran Thi Thu Hien*
Department of Foreign Languages for Specific Purposes, College of Foreign Languages,
Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Pham Van Dong Street, Cau Giay, Hanoi, Vietnam
Received 4 February 2009
Abstract. Action research is actually suitable for any person who wishes to improve his or her
performance; or any group or organization who hopes for doing the same. As a matter of fact,
action research is widely used in education, especially by teachers who use it to improve their
teaching. Teachers from all over the world, from the United States, Australia, New Zealand to
Vietnam, etc have employed action research as a part of their teaching and research. Obviously,
action research well matches with education and benefits both teachers and students in their
teaching and learning since it meets the need of education and enables continuity in research with
its cyclic process. The suitability of action research to education reveals in its nature,
characteristics, “circle within circle” process, etc. In order to find a proper answer for the above
question, this article will look at all aspects concerning action research including definitions,
advantages, steps, etc to see the importance and the benefits of action research to education.
1. Education setting and research*
● The methodology used must be reliable
enough to allow teachers to formulate
hypotheses confidently and develop strategies
applicable to the classroom situation;
● The teacher should be committed to the
research problem under study;
● Teachers must follow ethical procedures
when carrying out research; and
● Classroom research where possible
should adopt a perspective where all members
of a school community build and share a
common vision.
In the era of teaching as research, teacher
researchers have adopted term “action research”
to refer to their particular approach to
classroom research. So far, action research has
proved its suitability to education and become
more and more important in education
organizations.
Traditionally, research in education intends
to bring useful changes to either teachers’
teaching or students’ learning or both.
Educators as teacher researchers often wish to
carry out research within their classrooms or
schools to improve their teaching, to assess a
newly developed educational theory or to
implement and evaluate an educational plan.
According to Hopkins [1] a basis for the
selection of a classroom research by teachers
centers around the following criteria:
● The teacher’s primary role is to teach and
any research project must not interfere with or
disrupt this commitment;
● The method of data collection should not
be too demanding on the teacher’s time;
______
*
Tel.: 84-4-38329045.
E-mail: [email protected]
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T.T.T. Hien / VNU Journal of Science, Foreign Languages 25 (2009) 97-106
2. Definitions of action research
Kurt Lewin, a German social psychologist,
has been credited with the development of the
idea of action research. He first found that
experimental methods, in many cases, were
inadequate and unsatisfactory. He then tried to
seek for a method that based on people’s realworld experience; from that time on, action
research has entered the world of researchers.
According to Kurt Lewin [2], action
research is “a comparative research on the
conditions and effects of various forms of social
action and research leading to social action”;
this type of research uses “a spiral step,” each of
which is “composed of a circle of planning, action
and fact-finding about the result of the action”.
Also discussing about action research, Carr
and Kemmis [3] pay much attention to the
purposes of action research when they define it
as “a form of self-reflective enquiry undertaken
by participants in social situations in order to
improve the rationality and justice of their own
practices, their understanding of these practices
and the situations in which the practices are
carried out”.
On the other hand, looking at the nature of
action research, O’Brien [4] asserts that
although action research has been referred to by
different names such as participatory research,
collaborative inquiry, emancipatory research,
action learning or contextural action research, it
is truly understood as “learning by doing”
namely, a group of people encounter a problem;
they do something to resolve it; they then see
how successful their efforts are and if they are
not satisfied with the result they can try it again.
O’Brien’s view is shared by Dick [5] when
he states that “action research is a natural way
of acting and researching at the same time”. To
make it clearer, Dick affirms that action
research is a true reflection of its names as it is
intended to achieve both action and research at
the same time. It is critically suitable for
educational situations where teachers wish to
bring about action in the form of change or
improvement in their teaching and at the same
time develop an understanding which informs
the change and is an addition to what is known.
Also concerning educational action
research, Carr and Kemmis [6] put their general
definition of action research into education
setting as “action research is a form of selfreflective inquiry that can be utilized by
teachers in order to improve the rationality and
justice of (i) their own practices, (ii) their
understanding of these practices and (iii) the
situations in which these practices are carried
out. Obviously, the role of action research in
education has been acknowledged for a long
time when Hutchinson and Whitehouse [7],
Lomax [8] claim that action research is a
research that “concerns with broader curriculum
issues, and often with the administration and
management of school and institutional
change.” Glickman [9] says that action research
in education setting is a study conducted by
teacher researchers to improve problems in their
classrooms. In addition, Calhoun [10] explains
action research as a fancy research when she says
that “let’s study what’s happening in our school
and decide how to make it a better place”.
In short, it is possible to say that action
research can be looked at as a professional
development tool since it tries to enhance the
capacity of teachers as generator of professional
knowledge in contrast to enhancing their
capacity to apply someone else’s knowledge.
(Burns [11]).
3. Purposes of using action research in
education
Burns [11] acknowledges action research as
an influential tool for school and classroom
investigation. He claims that purposes of action
research in education fall broadly into
categories that reflect action research as:
● A means of remedying problems in a
specific situations or somewhat improving a
given set of circumstances.
T.T.T. Hien / VNU Journal of Science, Foreign Languages 25 (2009) 97-106
● A means of in-service training by
equipping the teachers with new skills and
methods, sharpening analytical powers and
heightening self-awareness.
● A means of injecting additional or
innovatory approaches to teaching and learning
into an ongoing system which normally inhibits
innovation and change.
● A means of improving the normally poor
communications between the practising
teachers and the academic researchers and of
remedying the failure of traditional research to
give clear prescriptions.
● A means of providing a preferable
alternative
to
the
more
subjective,
impressionistic approach to problem-solving in
the classroom.
4. Characteristics of action research
Hitherto, many scholars have attempted to
characterize action research in terms of a
school-based research. From Carr and
Kemmis’s [3] definition, McDonough [12]
proposes four characteristics of ‘pure’ action
research as follows:
● It is participant-driven and reflective;
● It is collaborative;
● It leads to change and the improvement of
practice not just knowledge in itself; and
● It is context-specific.
This is because an action research is usually
implemented in a specific classroom by a
particular teacher or group of teachers who
work together (and in collaboration with
students) to pursue a change or improvement in
their teaching and learning issues.
Kemmis and Mc Taggart [13] argue that the
three defining characteristics of action research are:
● It is carried out by practitioners
(classroom teachers) rather than outside
researchers;
● It is collaborative; and
99
● It aims at changing things.
Especially, they stress that the momentum for
carrying out an action research is to change the
system. This assertion is different from Cohen and
Manion [14] when they identify collaboration as
an important feature of action research.
Relatively different, Borgia and Schuler
[15] describe components of action research as
the “Five C’s”:
● Commitment: Time commitment should
be carefully considered by participants of action
research since it takes them time to get
acquaintance with other participants, think
about change, try new approach, collect data,
interpret results, etc.
● Collaboration: In an action research all
participants are equal to each others in terms of
giving ideas, suggestions or anything that leads
to success of the change.
● Concern: In the research process,
participants will build up a group of “critical
friends” who trust each other and the value of
the project.
● Consideration: As it is mentioned above,
reflective practice is a mindful review of a
professional research like action research. It
demands
concentration
and
careful
consideration as one seeks patterns and
relationships that will create meaning within the
investigation.
● Change: For humans, especially teachers,
change is continuing and it is a significant
element in remaining their effectiveness.
Briefly speaking, Creswell [16] proposes
six key characteristics of action research as:
● A practical focus;
● The educator-researcher’s own practices;
● Collaboration;
● A dynamic process;
● A plan of action and; and
● Sharing research.
Creswell asserts that understanding the
above characteristics will help teachers better
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T.T.T. Hien / VNU Journal of Science, Foreign Languages 25 (2009) 97-106
design their own study to read, evaluate and use
an action research study published in literature.
Particularly, action research aims at addressing
an actual problem in a specific education setting
namely the teacher researchers are studying a
practical issue that will benefit education.
Besides, teacher researchers engage in action
research first and foremost because of their own
situation rather than someone else’s practice. In
this sense, they engage in “participatory” or
“self-reflective teaching”; namely, they reflect
on what they have learnt and what they can do
to improve their own educational situation.
Moreover, in the research development,
researchers collaborate with one another and all
co-participants in an action research is referred
to as collaborative team including teachers,
students, administrators and even parents and
stakeholders. All of them involve in a dynamic
process or exactly a “spiral of activities” in
which they go back and forth between
reflection about a problem, data collection and
action. Creswell also maintains that at a certain
stage of the process, in order to respond to the
problem studied, action researchers will
formulate an either formal or informal action plan
which will engage few individual or the entire
community into research. Especially, action
research is different from other type of research in
terms of sharing the results. Traditionally,
researchers report their investigation in journals or
book publications but action researchers usually
first present their research to teachers and other
educational officials.
In short, during their studies, scholars may
provide different opinions about action
research; some of them say that collaboration is
the defining characteristic of action research
while others insist that publication is an
important one. However, although the above
characteristics may slightly different from one
another, they all acknowledge action research
as a powerful tool for teachers to find solutions
for problems in their own education settings, or
to change or improve some of their educational
issues. Personally speaking, the author of this
paper finds that change is a key feature of
action research since action research is used in
real educational situations focusing on solving
real problems in education and at the end of
each study; change must take place quickly or
holistically.
5. “Circle within circle” process of an action
research
Steps in action research vary from different
points of view as Creswell [16] asserts that
“action research is a dynamic, flexible process”
and there is “no blueprint exists for how to
proceed.” Hence, it is really impossible to assert
this or that researcher is right with exact four,
five, six, seven or eight steps in their action
research. Sometimes, it is hard to define a clear
cut between the steps and the number of steps
in action research may vary depending on
different points of view held by researchers.
Traditionally, Lewin’s [2] model of action
research involves a cyclic sequence including
two major phases: diagnosis and therapeutic.
These two phases are then divided into seven
substages as follows:
● Stage 1: In this stage, problem or just
general idea about state of affair a participant
wish to change or improve is identified,
evaluated or formulated.
● Stage 2: This stage is the time for fact
finding so that a fully drawn picture of the
situation is presented to help the researcher
clarify the nature of the problem.
● Stage 3: This stage is related and
synthesized with the critical review of the
problem in stage two. It aims at reviewing
research literature to discover what can be
learnt from comparable studies, their purposes,
procedures and problems they come across
come across. Usually, in this stage, the
researcher generates hypotheses which attempt
to enlighten some of the facts of the problem.
● Stage 4: This is the stage where the
researcher starts to gather relevant information
T.T.T. Hien / VNU Journal of Science, Foreign Languages 25 (2009) 97-106
to test hypotheses proposed in the previous
stage. However, it is important to note that this
testing of hypotheses is not statistical testing
but an action seeing whether the evidence is
compatible with the hypotheses. Lewin also
suggests that even when one has finished
testing hypotheses he should keep the status of
“hypotheses” rather than “conclusions” as he
may encounter situations where these
hypotheses do not apply.
● Stage 5: At this stage, teachers and other
participants in collaborative team will discuss,
negotiate and made decisions on the selection of
research procedures including material choice,
teaching methods, allocations of tasks, etc.
● Stage 6: This stage get participants
involved in the realization of the action plan.
101
They determine circumstances and methods of
data collection, classification and analysis; they
also together monitor the task and consider the
choice of evaluative procedures.
● Stage 7: This stage includes the
interpretation of data collected and the overall
evaluation of the research. At this stage, the cycle
of research is likely to be repeated. At the end of
each cycle, outcomes of the research are studied,
some suggestions are proposed and test, etc. The
projected is finally reported to the public.
Sharing the view with Lewin’s idea of the
repeating cycles of action research, Kemmis [17]
has developed a simple model of the cyclical
nature of the typical action research process. He
asserts that each cycle of an action research has
four steps: plan, act, observe and reflect.
Figure 1. Simple action research mode.
Slightly different, Susman [18] identifies five steps to be implemented in an action research as
follows:
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Step 1:
DIAGNOSING
Identifying or
defining a problem
Step 5:
Step 2:
SPECIFYING
LEARNING
ACTION PLANNING
Considering
alternative courses
of action
Identifying general
findings
Step 4:
Step 3:
EVALUATING
TAKING ACTION
Studying the
consequences of
an action
Selecting a course
of action
Figure 2. Detailed action research mode.
Concerning action research as activity
research, Nunan [19] argues that the seven steps
in the action research cycle are:
● Step1: Initiation - A problem triggers the
idea of action research
● Step 2: Preliminary investigation Baseline data are collected to help understand
the nature of the problem.
● Step 3: Hypotheses - A hypothesis is
formulated after reviewing the initial data.
● Step 4: Intervention - A number of
strategies are devised and applied.
● Step 5: Evaluation - An assessment is
carried out to evaluate the intervention. Some
steps may be repeated.
● Step 6: Dissemination - A report of the
research is published. Ideas emerged from the
research are shared.
● Step 7: Follow-up - Alternative solutions
for the problem are continually investigated.
To make it simple, Gay and Airasian [20]
propose the basic steps in action research as
follows:
● Step 1: Identify topic or issue to study;
● Step 2: Collect data related to the chosen
topic or issue;
● Step 3: Analyze and interprete the
collected data; and
● Step 4: Carry out action planning, which
represents the appliaction of the action research
results.
In contrast, Creswell [16] looks at
procedure of action research as detail process
with 8 steps as:
● Step 1: Determine if action research is the
best design to use;
● Step 2: Identify a problem to study;
● Step 3: Locate resources to help address
the problem;
● Step 4: Identify information to be needed;
● Step 5: Implement the data collection;
● Step 6: Analyze the data;
● Step 7: Develop a plan for action; and
● Step 8: Implement the plan and reflect.
T.T.T. Hien / VNU Journal of Science, Foreign Languages 25 (2009) 97-106
In brief, these above processes of action
research are different from one another since
they are either basic, simple or elaborate
models. During the research, one may find a
models either more effective or less suitable
than the other ones depending of particular
situations and education settings.
6. Types of action research
According to O’Brien [4], the development
of action research has witnessed four main
“streams” that have emerged as: (i) Traditional
action research, (ii) Contextural action research
(Action learning), (iii) Radical action research
and (iv) Educational action research. Namely,
Traditional action research is originated
from Lewin’s work within organizations. It
tends toward conservative, general maintaining
the status quo with regards to organization
power structures. “The growth importance of
labour-management relation led to the
application of action research in area of
organization development”.
“Contextural action research, also known as
action learning, is stemmed from Trist’s work
on relations between organizations. This
approach stresses on participants’ act as project
designers or co-researchers and sructural
relations among actors in a social environment
(context)”.
“Radical action research has its roots in
Marxian "dialectical materialism" and it centers
103
around emanciaption and the overcoming of
power imbalances”. The two branches of this
school is Participatory Action Research and
Feminist Action Research.
“Educational action research is founded
after John Dewey, an American educational
philosopher, who held that professional
educators should become involved in
community problem-solving”. Naturally, it
concentrates on development of curriculum,
professional improvement, and applying
learning in a social context.
From a different point of view, Creswell
[16] argues that there are two main types of
action research as follows:
● Practical action research
● Participatory action research
Practical action research is used in
situations in which teacher researchers “seek to
enhance the practice of education through the
systematic study of a local problem.” It usually
involves a small-case research project, narrowly
directs at a specific problem or issue and is
undertaken by individual teachers or teams
within a particular education setting.
Participatory action research is usually
implemented in larger scale to improve “the
quality of people’s organisation, communities
and family lives”. Namely, it has a “social and
community orientation” and it focuses on
research that “contributes to emancipation or
change in our society”.
Table 1. Two types of action research
TWO TYPES OF ACTION RESEARCH
Practical action research
Participatory action research
- Studying local practices
- Studying social issues that constrain individual lives
- Involving individual or team-base inquiry
- Emphasizing “equal” collaboration
- Focusing on teacher development and student - Focusing on “life-enhancing” change
learning
- Resulting in the imancipated researchers
- Implementing a plan of action
- Leading to the teacher-as-researcher
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7. Benefits of action research to education
Teachers as researcher and students as
change-receiver profit much from action research.
When looking at educational dimension of action
research, Gay and Airasian [20] prove benefits
resulted from the application of action research to
education as follows:
● Teachers investigate their own practice in
new ways, looking deeper in what they and
their studenst actually do and fail to do.
● Teachers develop a deeper understanding of
students, the teacher learning process and their role
in the education of both teachers and students.
● Teachers are viewed as equal partners in
deciding what works best and what needs
improvement in their classroom or classrooms.
● In most cases, solutions for identified
problems are arrived cooperatively among teachers.
● Teachers are often more committed to
action research because they identify the areas
they view as problematical and in need of change.
● Action research is an ongoing process and
its strategies can be widely applied.
● Professional development and school
improvement are core aspects for any teacher
who engages in action research.
Epistemology
Theoretical perspective
Methodology
Methods
● Teacher refelection can be conducted
individually or in a school-based team
composed
of
students,
teachers
and
admistrators.
Sharing the view with Borgia and Schuler
[15], Mills [21] admits the importance of action
research in education by adding that action
research:
● Encourages change in schools;
● Fosters a democratic approach to
education;
●
Empowers
individuals
through
collaboration on projects;
● Positions teachers and other eduactors as
learners who seek to narrow the gap between
practice and their vision education;
● Encourages educators to reflect on their
practice; and
● Promotes a process of testing new ideas.
8. Action research in research paradigm
According to O’Brien [4], in the past
several centuries, action research was situated
in positivist paradigm as follows:
Objectivism
Logical Positivism
Action research
Qualitative
Figure 3. Action research in traditional research paradigm.
T.T.T. Hien / VNU Journal of Science, Foreign Languages 25 (2009) 97-106
This paradigm is understandable basing on
a number of principles: a belief in an objective
reality, knowledge of which is only gained from
sense data that can be directly experienced and
verified between independent observers.
Phenomena are subject to natural laws that
humans discover in a logical manner through
empirical testing, using inductive and deductive
hypotheses derived from a body of scientific
theory. Its methods rely heavily on quantitative
measures, with relationships among variables
commonly shown by mathematical means.
105
ositivism, used in scientific and applied
research, has been considered the antithesis of
the principles of action research (Susman and
Evered [22], Winter, [23]).
However, over the last half century, a new
research paradigm “characterized by a belief in a
socially constructed, subjectively-based reality”
has emerged in social science. Thus, action
research, which still keeps hold of the ideals of
researcher objectivity, is now situated in
interpretive paradigm (O’Brien [4]) as follows:
Epistemology
Social Constructionism
Theoretical perspective
Interpretivism
Methodology
Action research
Methods
Qualitative
Figure 4. Action research in modern research paradigm.
9. Conclusion
In summary, although some people may
critique that action research is an informal
research since teachers are not academic
researchers, it is widely believed that action
research is extremely suitable for education as its
main purpose is to help teachers as researchers
solve their teaching problems “in action”. It
allows teachers to learn about their teaching at the
same time that they improve their teaching. They
are able to do this because action research has a
cyclic process. Teachers notice what they do with
what results. They learn from this. They apply
their new learning to plan improvements. They try
it out. They notice what happens, thus repeating
the cycle. Briefly, action research is so suitable to
education as it is a process of exploration in which
teachers explore such things as themselves as an
educators, their lives or unique perspectives of
their students, the structure and practices of
educational systems in oder to bring possitive
change to their schools and communities.
References
[1] D. Hopkins, A teacher's guide to classroom reasearch,
Open University Press, Philadelphia, 1985.
[2] K. Lewin, Action research and minority problems,
Journal of Social Issues 2(1946) 34.
[3] W. Carr, S. Kemmis, Becoming critical: education,
knowledge and action research, Palmer Press,
London, 1986.
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[4] R. O’Brien, An overview of the methodological
approach of action research, Universidade Federal
da Paraíba, João Pessoa, 2001.
[5] B. Dick, Action reseach: action and research, [On
line].
Available
at
http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/gcm/ar/arp/aandr.ht
ml, 2002.
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through action research, Deakin University Press,
Victoria, 1983.
[7] T. Hutchinson, P. Whitehouse, Action research,
professional competence and school organisation,
British educational research journal 12 (1986) 85.
[8] P. Lomax, Managing staff development in schools:
an action research approach, Multilingual matters,
Philadelphia, 1990.
[9] C.D. Glickman, The essence of school renewal: the
Prose Has Begun, Educational Leadership 49
(1992) 24.
[10] E.F. Calhoun, How to used action research in the
self-renewing school, Association for supervision
and curriculum instructions, Alexandria, 1994.
[11] R.B. Burns, Introduction to research methods, 4th
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[12] J. Mc Donough, S. Mc Donough, Research methods
for English language teachers, Arnold, Delh, 1997.
[13] S. Kemmis, R. Mc Taggart, The action research planner,
3rd ed, Deakin University Press, Geelong, 1988.
[14] L. Cohen, L. Manion, Research methods in
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chilhood education, University of Illinois, UrbanaChampaign, 1996.
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research, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 2005.
[17] S. Kemmis, Improving education through action
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[18] G.I. Susman, Action research: A sociotechnical
system perspective in Ed. G. Morgan, Beyond
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[19] D. Nunan, Research methods in language learning,
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researcher, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 2000.
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scientific merits of action research, Administrative
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[23] R. Winter, Learning from experience: Principle and
practice in action research, Palmer Press, London, 1989.
Tại sao lại nói nghiên cứu tìm giải pháp
phù hợp với lĩnh vực giáo dục?
Trần Thị Thu Hiền
Khoa Ngoại ngữ chuyên ngành, Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ,
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Nghiên cứu tìm giải pháp (Nghiên cứu hành động) thực ra phù hợp với bất cứ ai, bất cứ tổ chức
nào muốn sử dụng loại hình nghiên cứu này nhằm nâng cao chất lượng công việc của mình. Nghiên
cứu tìm giải pháp được các giáo viên trên khắp thế giới sử dụng như một phần quan trọng trong công
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ứng được nhu cầu của ngành giáo dục và đảm bảo tính liên tục trong nghiên cứu với tiến trình nối tiếp
và tuần hoàn của nó. Để tìm một câu trả lời thấu đáo cho câu hỏi trên, bài báo này sẽ đi sâu tìm hiểu
tất cả các mặt liên quan đến nghiên cứu tìm giải pháp như các khái niệm, những ưu điểm, các bước
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cho lĩnh vực giáo dục.